Comparing Stories 'Sixteen And Through The Tunnel'

In the stories "Sixteen" and "Through the Tunnel" both authors use a theme of characters wanting to prove themselves to someone. However, the differences of these two stories becomes apparent when who the characters are trying to prove themselves to. In "Sixteen" the main character seems to be attempting to prove herself to the reader, that she is smart enough and popular enough to be telling this story. But in "Through the Tunnel" Jerry tries to prove himself to the foreign boys he looks up to and also to himself. Throughout each story, the characters try to prove something to themselves or other people. In Maureen Daly's short story "Sixteen" the narrator is clearly trying to prove to the reader that she is smart and popular. A very clear example of this occurs at the …show more content…
As she goes on to say that she is not really that dumb, her message clearly becomes an attempt to convince us that she is smart. Finally, when she says, "I get around," it appears as though she is trying to tell the reader that she is popular. Combining what has just been learned from the narrator's statements, She is trying to prove to someone her ethos: that she is smart enough and popular enough to be telling us a story about a boy. In Doris Lessing's short story "Through the Tunnel" the main character named Jerry meets a group of older, foreign boys hanging around in a wild looking bay full of rocks. He sees them swim through an underwater tunnel. When Jerry climbs onto the rock with the foreign boys and they all shout greetings to which Jerry cannot respond to, Lessing writes, "They understood that he was a foreigner strayed from his own beach, and they proceeded to forget him." The moment the boys realize he is a foreigner, he is out of sight and out of mind, no longer anything they want to care about. Jerry takes notice of this, and desperately wants to prove himself to